Walking Into the Sunset Together?

​Marriage isn’t walking off into the sunset. Marriage is more like this picture...walking hand in hand into the great, wide unknown.

Novella Photography

I often think of this quote from UU ministers Barbara and Bill Hamilton-Holway:

"Marriage is one of the most remarkable and most courageous of human acts: the promise of two human beings to share life together on all levels...a promise made in the face of the certainty of death, the certainty of change, and the uncertainty of everything else. There is nothing else quite like this act; nothing so foolish, nothing so profound."

When I share this quote with engaged couples, some of them cringe or look at me wide-eyed. But when I read it to couples who’ve been married a while, whether 2 years or 20, they just nod knowingly.

Marriage is perhaps the greatest leap of faith we can take, only we don’t always realize it at first.

It is as the months and years wind and ravel, as we are weathered by sun and squalls that we come to fully understand our undertaking.

It is there, in the plain light of our days, that we can reach for our beloved’s hand and know what our promise truly means.
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